NEW NOVELS

Press, Volume LXXI, Issue 21400, 16 February 1935, Page 15

NEW NOVELS

1 FRANZ WERFEL'S LATEST The Forty Days. By Franz Werfel. Jarrolds Ltd. 653 pp. (10s 6d net.) Through Whitcombe and Tombs Ltd. Religious hatred, economic envy, and political distrust inspired the Young Turk party in 1915 to try to extirpate the Armenian people by a series of mass deportations into, Mesopotamia. This policy was more than an expulsion from home and the rewards of years of industry; it sent a people, a prey to hate, over thousands of miles of wild country; it cast a people into chains as outlaws, beaten and ravaged and starved, victims whom anyone naa the rieht to kill. The scope and barbarity of this enterprise made the cruelty of Abdul Hamid seem Hke the harmless rage ot a foolish bungler One community preferred to entrench itself on a hill, to endure a blockade and fierce attacks, and • probably to perish in battle rather than to face the horrors of deportation. A few thousand Armenians, therefore, under the leadershio of Gabriel Bagradian a Gallicised man of wealth, established themselves on Musa Dagn, beat off' four attacks, and, alter 4U days of siege and hardship, were relieved by a French naval force. They had suffered other risks than enemy bullets and bayonets. Obstinacy and irresolution impeded, their first establishment, weak hearts and doubtful associates almost caused ruin, and disaster was in sight when the ' carelessness of sentinels permitted the loss of the animals by which the besieged lived. This is the subject of Herr Werfel's novel. Franz Werfel first won fame as a poet and the poet's instincts ;uv still strong .in him. From poetrv he In rued to the theatre, and a sense of climax and contrast informs his prose as well as his plays. In F.m'kmd he is known by two recent novels, "The Class Reunion' and "The- Hidden Child.'' He has written nothing more intense than "The Forty Days" and he could find in no other subject more material scope, more inherent tragedy, and stronger nassions. But the novel is not a great success. It is moving and horrifying indeed: it contains brilliant pieces of intuition such as the gradual disintegration of a cultured woman in the midst of barbarity and the colloauy between Enver Pasha and the humanitarian German, Dr. Lepsius; its expression is often heightened by sharp feeling into strong, bare prose that is graceful and rhythmical even in translation. Herr Werfel has also escaped the ready danger of excessive moralising. His application of the theme is the eternal moral anomaly that human wickedness caru< s I human suffering; in ' this instance I Turkish hatred trying to destroy Armenian devotion through envy of the communal energy and sure nationalism of the weaker race. In assembling and organising his great theme, Werfel, the poet and the novelist, has been stifled by excess of illustration and by the inchoate variety of the emotions that have inspired him. He has not been stern enough in rejection nor firm enough to keep to one path. A melodramatic episode intrudes upon a mood of fine understanding, and grotesque horror treads upon the heels of delicate satire. Passion becomes hysterical and irony is doubly underlined. Thus Stephan, the deliverer's young son, who has broken camp to snipe upon an artillery post, is said "with five cartridges to have avenged the million-fold decimation of his race, on harmless peasants, forced to arms ... on the wrong people, as war and revenge always do." Herr Werfel's peculiar power is the ability to represent the growth and decline of ethical and emotional feelings. His chief character, Bagradian, is another Hamlet, not so irresolute, for he is able to command circumstanoe and his fellows; yet he is doomed by singleness of mind to alienate those he loves and to destroy himself. He is the restrained scholar who proves that he can lead men, but finds that feware worth the leadership. His wife, Juliette, avoids horror and sacrifice by allowing her moral, dutiful self to be devoured by false sensuality. The other characters, Turkish and Armenian, are a sombre crew, distinguished by poignancy of suffering or by implacable self-seeking. Saris Kilikian, a Russian deserter, who adds himself to Bagradian's party, is one of the strangest creations who have achieved reality. This cold-blooded, insensitive man has endured so long that he is immune to mental or physical pain, and can with equal calm be a vile coward or a foolhardy hero. In the same way as he describes the development of an individual, Herr Werfel can represent the growth of a community. It is interesting, because it is so true, to watch on Musa Dagh the transported villages resuming, in circumstances of unfamiliar danger, the customs and superstitions that fear has repressed. Indeed this sense of popular unity reduces to little the fatal intrigue of Juliette and Gonzague Maris, the misery of the priest, Ter Haigasun, and the grief of Bagradian himself. From this wild story there will linger in the memory some strange characters, a violent historical episode, a profound pity for blind nationalism, and a furious but sombre picture of war scenes which have not been painted before because their sad, miserable reality was obscured by a warfare which, if it involved greater numbers and carnage, was at least less barbarous. LEARN TO SAY "NO" Consenting Party. By Monica Redlich. Hamish Hamilton. 301 pp. Really a charming comedy of manners; every stroke light and smooth, but firm; the whole thing sitting neat and snug within its own proper dimensions; the last touch, the last sentence, the last phrase, perfecting it. "No," said Nicky with fervour. "Oh no, I'm not." She had learned to say "No." But Mr Montgomery, the rising young novelist and her father's nearest rival, had the luck of this new profipiency. "Er —I was wondering," said George Montgomery,"—l'd be terribly pleased if you'd come out to dinner one night and perhaps go on to a show." "Oh," said Nicky. "I'd—l'd love to." "Oh, that is good of you," said Mr Montgomery, disregarding her thanks. "Well, let me see. What about Wednesday?" On Nicky's face was a large and foolish smile. She held the receiver closer to her ear. "Y_» she said, and then suddenly she stopped. Nicky had said Yes and Yes arid Yes, all her life, and got into state after state after state when she could not bear to eat an egg at breakfast; and now, after her last disillusion, after her father's wise, kind sermon, after his proving that he rated her pretty high by making

her his secretary—here she was, instantly saying "Y—." But she knew George had two nights in town. "No," she said, and a little yammering of "Sorry" and "Oh, dear" followed. "I'm dining with some men on Thursday," his voice said thoughtfully. "I'm only up for two nights. I think I could put them off, though. Yes, I know I could. Yes, I'm certain I could. Well, look here, Miss Vane—you're not going to tell me you can't manage Thursday either?" There was a final pause. "No," said Nicky with fervour. 'Oh no, I'm not." Finis coronat sob stuff. Nicky had suffered a good deal through her readiness to bend to the whims and exactions of the loving, self-loving, hypochondriac Adrian, to do the literary hackwork of his trusted, trustful, thrusting wife, Priscilla. . Priscilla added that . . Nicky would find four or five rather jolly review books on the table by the typewriter. "Oh, thanks," said Nicky. Priscilla went to the mirror and adjusted a bow at the neck of her impeccable travelling suit. "You'll find his Benger's in the bathroom cupboard," she went on. "Just warm water. Not hot." "Right you are," said Nicky feeling suddenly rather dowdy. . . . "And he likes soft-boiled eggs." "Soft," said Nicky. But Nicky began to turn mutinously negative when Priscilla slid off with the lamb Henry, and her role promised or threatened to be that of Adrian's cosseter and comforter and general fusspot. So, one way and another, to the right front against George. HAPTTST QUIXOTE Heaven's My Destination. By C. Thornton Wilder. Longmans, Green, and Co. 245 pp. Mr Wilder's new book is richly comic; but the adventures of: his talkative, high-minded, busybody, fundamentalist traveller in school books. George Marvin Brush, provoke more than laughter. Mr Wilder turns Brush and turns the world to take the light, so cunningly that now one and now the other reflects the greater folly; and behind amusement pricks again and again the little pin of doubt. George is no fool, at least no fool at his business, though a sublime innocent, at large; it is only in the realm of ethics that he wears his difference like a motley. So he tracks down and "rights" by marriage the unwilling girl whose casual willingness, once, had shut for him the door to the Baptist ministry. So he assists a holdup man, on the principle of Ahimsa, to lift a small shopkeeper's hidden cash, which he restores from his own pocket, and dazes Judge Carberry with a solemn, elaborate, exposition of his principles. So, at a church social, where he'has been welcomed as a St. George for his heroic defence of Miss Simmons against rude boys, he staggers the minister and company by regretting that he had used his fists: It's a hard thing to think clearly about ... I guess we ought to have let him insult her. You see, Mr Forrest, the theory is this: if bad people are treated kindly by the people they insult, why, then they start thinking about it and then they become ashamed . . . that's the theory. That's Gandhi's theory. George does not know enough to know that his lodging-house friends are making him drunk, or that Ma Crofut has too many "daughters" under her roof for household or moral regularity. He is quite perfect, quite impossible, right in the wrong way, wrong in the right way, mad in a mad civilisation, whose flashes of sanity make contradiction with his own. The only weakness of Mr Wilder's brilliant piece of work is that, though he brings George low in disaster and loss of faith, he restores him undeveloped to himself and his faith and to precisely the same course. Geoi-ge goes on talking again, blundering righteously into prison, generously paying for the college education of ambitious, pomgirls with pretty faces ... Or is the last glimpse of George, full steam ahead again on the little circular track of his destiny, the sharpest thing in the book? MORE OF IRELAND On the Edge of the Stream. By Pcadar O'Donnell. Jonathan Cape. 288 pp. Phil Timony returned to his native village, from which he had marched off with a sore heart and empty pockets, 11 years before, and found himself inevitably taking the lead in a revolt against the extortionate shopkeepers of the neighbouring town, especially the Garveys, who kept the hotel and a store, bought the village produce at their own prices, lent money, and had their grip on almost everything and everybody. Obscurely begun, through Dr Miller's drunken protest against a slight the Garveys put upon him, the revolt which produced the co-operative store, the "Cope," passed through stages of enthusiasm and success, fear and doubt and weakening, and at the moment when collapse seemed certain achieved triumph. The counter-attack threatened most danger when it had religious force and worked upon religious fears; but Donal's bull scattered j procession, and one crisis was past, and Nelly McFadden, the schoolmaster's wife, hurled her heart and her pride against the last, deadly plot and broke it. Certainly this is a lively story; but the minor characters, the village oddities and simpletons, seem all to stand out clearer than the principals, such as Nelly, for example, the sordid, climbing fellow Ned, her husband, or Phil, whom she had loved and surrendered but not ceased to love. An exception, perhaps, is her mother, an excellent study of a calculating, tenacious, ambitious old woman. Another fault, common in Irish (and not only Irish) novels of the peasantry and the soil, is overwriting. Phii Timony. for instance, is trudging through the rain: Water plunged loudly in his navvy boots, making a sound like the guttering of a feeding duck in the shallow edge of a pond. Rain dribbled down his glazed peaked cap, beslavering his face like the seepings of a thatched efalve eddied on to a pane. Soggy boots and a dripping face need not be described with such careful fancy. THE STRUGGLE OVER A Thing- of Nought. By Hilda Vaughan. With Decorations by Lee Elliott. Lovat Dickson Ltd. 51 pp. (2/6 net.) Although the craftsmanship is a little self-conscious, this small book is pleasing in every respect. The Aldine Bembo type is strong and clear, the paper is fine and durable, and the printer and binder have been thorough. The decorations are too grotesquely sombre even for a tale so solemn as Miss Vaughan's. However, the entire publication draws attention to the number of

factors which musf be in harmony if a book is to please more than one sense. A summary of "A Thing of Nought" sounds like drab melodrama. An old Welshwoman tells the story of her life. In her girlhood she pledged herself to a vigorous and handsome young man who was obliged to emigrate to find her a home. She waited faithfully, and although he had failed for several years to establish himself, she kept her love fresh. Silence enabled her parents to convince her of his death and to persuade her to marry the intense and inhumanely restrained young minister whose dark and passionate piety had inflamed their hearts. The 'absent lover returns, meets the wife and departs, but leaves the suspicion that the minister's first child is a bastard. For long years the wife endures her husband's bitter suspicions, which die only when he overhears a conversation between his wife and her dying lover. Understanding his own sensuous cruelty and'her faithful purity, he sees his life's work and convictions reduced from grandeur to poverty. The story is strengthened by admirable art. The characters are boldly realised, the background of dreary hill country is actual; but Miss Vaughan's greatest achievement is like that of Emily Bronte: to represent repressed passions and hidden conflicts in a small community whose isolation and stern convention drive individuals into close and unnatural interaction. Suffering is acute, longing is bitter; but when all is done, the years have gone, and the struggle has been meaningless unless it has brought resignation. BLACK COUNTRY Prophet without Honour. By Russell Green. Thomas Nelson and Sons Ltd. 3.'{2 pp. Mr Green's is a first novel, but shows few traces of immaturity—no I. even Ihe relishing emphasis of sordid details which is pretty well invariable in first (and later) novels about Victorian industrialism and social change. The hero, George Kyre. is followed from a cramped and darkened boyhood in the Black Country through various advances, checks, and changes of "direction to the point when he ventures independently into business. He is drawn neither as a Victorian rebel nor as a Victorian pomposity, but as a man sufficiently typical to express his age and sufficiently detached to observe and speculate judiciously. Within rather narrow dimensions this is a very good "life and times" study. SOME SHOUT ONES The First Class Omnibus of Short Novels. Edited by Helen Gossc. Ilndder and Stoughton. 575 pp. (7/6 net.) From W. S. Smart. A dozen or so of well-known writers are represented in this collection of stories too long to be "short stories" but short of standard novel length. The detective stories by J. J. Conington and the Coles are excellent, Mr Denis Mackail is as usual smoothly amusing, and there are good things by G. B. Stern, Kate O'Brien, Storm Jameson, and others. One or two writers are not very happily represented—Mr L. A. G. Strong, lor example; but the publishers are charging a ridiculously small fare for a ride so various and entertaining.